My precious...

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Earlier, I tried to get my daughters to create a Facebook
group against people with butts.

When they argued that everyone
has a butt, I waved off their objections, arguing that we’ve all had it with those people doing their butt things (I shuddered to emphasize my disgust), what with
the, “Oh God. REALLY?” and the, “Goatse? Isn’t that that
graffiti artist?” crap.

“They should be shipped off to Antarctica and forced to live
in butt-shaped huts that remind them of their sins. Only after they freeze
their butts off can they return to us-without-butts,” I said, picturing the
potential excellence of such a Facebook group. I added that, if the president
of Antarctica wasn’t down with this mass migration of butt people – really,
there’s no one else there but penguins and people taking pictures of penguins –
then we could ship them all off to Costa Rica. For some reason, that country
has been pissing me off lately.

EC asked, “Are there any other reasons why you want us to
make this page, aside from disgusting butt stuff?”

“You can say on the page that they don’t like bunnies. In
fact, you can say that they hate all cute, furry things because it reminds them
that they’re going about the whole wiping thing wrong. Also, say that they hate
us for our freedoms, specifically, our freedom to be intolerant of butts and
butt culture. “They hate us for our freedoms” is a phrase that seems to get a
lot of likes on Facebook.”

“I mean, are there other reasons you want us to do this, as in, is this just Dad
Busy Work to kill the joy of us having a week off from school?” Frank was
fiddling with her earbuds while EC’s eyes clicked clockwise, calculating the
amount of time of hers that Dad would waste.

“The, it’s settled,” I said to two faces worn blank from me
passing countless schemes by them. “Same time tomorrow, I expect a rough draft
of what you’ve come up with for this Facebook vilification of people with butts
–wise. Frank, you get Fall Out Boy on
board with this, convince them it’s a
thing and that they’d damned well better write a song for it. EC can Google
anti-butt links. I’ll wager there’s a video out there of a wolverine or a bear attacking
someone’s butt.”

I believe it was at the point where I said, “You know what
this family needs? Less pasta, more rice,” and then walked outside to wave at
passing traffic that my daughters switched me off in their minds and went back
to whatever was bouncing around in Tumblr, pigs on skateboards or babies being
shot of cannons.

For me, there was no escaping butts, especially what was
getting pulled out of them by pundits and polititwits. Of course, Mike
Huckabee went full-on racist – expecting anything less from Gomer is like
forgetting your free Snow Ball with the purchase of a two-liter Diet Coke – and
CNN
scrubbed a poll showing a Sanders advantage so they could announce a Clinton
win, we’re just a couple months into the Silly Season and there’s bound to
be more stories about cheese
eating and corrective
shoes over the next year. However, if Clinton gets the nomination, Republicans
and cable news yackers will be leaping in on every soundstage to scream, “Benghazi!”
like some gas-huffing ninja, throwing punches in the air and doing the moon
walk in their socks.

If they’re howling “Benghazi! Benghazi!” with the
perseveration of a hobo rain dancer, no one can hear that climate change and
income inequality are objectively destroying the world or that continuing to
sacrifice innocent lives at the altar of the Second Amendment is absolute
insanity.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying anything about Clinton’s
culpability in the matter (indeed, it’s a non-issue) but it’s out there,
bouncing around like a puppy that got a hold of a roll of Adderall. There’s no
stopping that.

That’s just another reason why I’m backing Sanders. No
matter how bogus the skeletons are in Hillary’s tastefully stocked closet
(prepare for the appearance of a zombie Vince Foster in some Twilight-like
Hillary fanfic), Bernie carries none of that baggage, not even enough to mix
metaphors. About as bad as it gets with him is, “He’s, um, like, a democratic
SOCIALIST, like, um, in those northern European countries that are totally
kicking our ass in about everything…”

Not even a dog shitting itself with terror while riding on
the roof of a station wagon. With Bernie, the media will be forced to focus on
the real issues instead of scouring the pages of the Weekly World News to search for Batboy’s
parents.

EC will vote in her first presidential election next year,
turning 18 about a month before ballots are cast and millions are
disenfranchised. Not willing to say who won the debate (she didn’t see it as
some moronic “America’s Got Sound Bites” competition), she nonetheless felt the
Bern, that Sanders spoke best about the things that concern her. Perhaps she’s naïve
in that, rejecting the “electability” palaver the Beltway binds up the
conversation with, but she’s clear that among all the candidates on last night’s
stage, Sanders will be the one least likely to pit special interests against
her own.

As for me, Sanders is the candidate who’s least likely to be
tainted by butt stuff.

Sometimes driving are a crap shoot meaning, crap wants to
get into your car and you have to shoot it. I’ve had people think they were
going to get a ride with me – after all, they did request it and I arrived –
only to hear me say, “Oh good! Uber is paying me $150 to drop off at detox!” Then
I shoot them.

Actually, Uber doesn’t allow drivers to carry guns,
something about not wanting riders to able to start a running gun battle while
dropping at the airport. Instead, I carry a hammer and wave it around while
screaming about my rights and freedoms.

The name that appeared on the call was “NPC Competitor
Steven” (really, I’m not shitting you) and I wondered what NPC was and why it
had contests. Given that I was picking up in the pit of Scottsdale’s club Hell,
I hoped NPC didn’t mean Never Purchase Crabs because they’re usually free with
a night of screaming in someone’s ear and blowing money on drinks.

When I Googled NPC just now, I learned that it’s the
National Physique Committee, a group of marginally serious people who judge the
bulges on men. To be fair, women are also featured but if people are judging
girl bulges that gets into a whole different level of fetish.

In fact, there’s some
guy running his own competition (which makes me wonder how legit this whole
NPC thing is), the pics on his site of male body builders doing their “You call
this an arm, I call it my dick” pose. That and lots of photos of the kinds of
girls who are, like, totally into guys with arm dicks. It looked as though
Jersey Shore had been hit by a nuclear hormone explosion, the Pauly D aftermath
being mutations of hideous proportions.

There’s a clan of cop cars when I pull up, lights flashing,
a Sheriff’s black SUV, everyone flashing their lights and doing cop things; I
should have brought donuts. I pull behind an empty unit and send a text to
announce, “It’s time to go, children.” I wait, roll a cigarette, turn up the Buzzcocks. Cops are shouting but not at me, so there's that. I’m watching the
timer on my phone, thinking of shaving 45 seconds off the wait time.

My thumb was ready to tap “Rider no show” in order to send
me rolling when NPC Competitor Steven texted me back:

My first indication that Uber had instituted a rolling liquor store policy.

I texted back, “LOL, that’ll be extra,” and watched as the
seconds neared GTG, hoping to send KTHXBAI. Suddenly, appearing at the car, a
couple of roided-out meatheads with biceps the size of pitbulls escorting three
stiletto-shod porn bots. It was as if the skies of Scottsdale shat latex, body
enhancements, breast implants and dance stank onto the sidewalk. I roll down
the window so NPC Competitor Steve won’t break it with his huge,
hormone-enhanced head.

“I can only take four unless you want to stuff one of the
girls back there. I don’t think either of you guys will fit back there.” Before
I could say that there was already a body in my trunk and I didn’t want to dump
it in front of the cops, they began climbing into my car.

“We can do it,” NPC Competitor Steve said as he got in the
front, “The guy who brought us here did it.”

“Then that guy’s car must have had a seat extension, an
option that didn’t come with this car. I’m not carrying an unbelted passenger through
the middle of a cop parade.”

“I’ll tip you. Twenty bucks, we’re not going far.”

The cops seem to be seriously occupied with whatever went
down with late-night pizza so I considered the Jackson. I could say I was delivering
collagen and two sides of beef if I got pulled over. Calculating the best exit,
I held out my hand and said, “Pay me now.”

“I just did, on the app.”

“No. You didn’t. You tipped someone else for something if
you did anything but you didn’t tip me. The Uber app doesn’t take tips.”

“Bullshit! The Uber app does
take tips, they just started it. They
did it to keep drivers from taking cash from customers and then also charging
their cards!”

It became immediately apparent that steroids had eaten this
guy’s brain, leaving just a kernel that allowed him to remember his own name
and jump around excitedly when someone offered to take him for a walk. Not
satisfied with the outrageous stupidity of the lie he’d just told, NPC Competitor
Steve continued to tap the final nail on the Scottsdale clubhead stereotype
coffin:

“I should know, Uber sponsors me and they keep me up to date
on everything they do. They give me stocks in the company. They just started
this in a few cities to see how this works.”

“Oh. Uber sponsors whatever you do because they feel they
don’t look ridiculous enough to UFC fans. And Oh, their defining policy of
discouraging tips, the one that is screamed loudly on their website and app
form, was reversed in an act of corporate whimsy and done some time after I
started driving tonight. Get the fuck out of my car.”

NPC Competitor Steve looked as though he wanted to paint the
upholstery with me, he was not used to people talking back to him. He was
probably confused by the other mouth that had words in it and could think only
to crush my little car with me in it then bounce the ball of metal and bloody flesh
down the street.

“Really?” whined Bambi or Muffin or Nipples, as the tanned
heap untangled from the backseat and oozed onto the sidewalk. The Roid Boyz
also got out, defeated, their Uber sponsorship an impossible dream at this
point. NPC Competitor Steve’s eyes clenched up like two commas that marked an
eternal pause.

I blazed out of there, cancelling the call and hoping I’d
never have to go back. A few minutes out, my app dinged, the location about a
block from where I’d been. There’s a rule that the distance from best lane you
need to turn to take a call is determined by the amount of shit you have left
to give. Having just witnessed the horrors of modern body enhancement science,
I was curious to see if the freak show still offered specimens of genetic atrocity
to cart around.

The rider called as soon as his app dinged. asking where I
was. He’d chosen the unfortunate location of a parking lot to meet me at,
thinking that among the dozens of cars there, mine would be the one with the
glittering Uber icon hovering above it. Judging by the number of phones to
faces and traffic all around, it was obvious that a game of Where’s Waldo is
quite popular in Scottsdale at 3 am.

“My lights are on. A cop just passed behind me and is now
turning into the parking lot.”

After waving them in, I saw that I’d be driving two bangers
to Tempe. The riders friend got in and then asked if I’d move my seat up.

“I’m a giant man and I need room to drive us safely. Sorry. You can sit up front if
you’d like.”

“I just can’t listen to one thing all night when I’m
driving, you know?”

“It gets boring.”

“Without my music, I couldn’t do this job.”

I dropped the rider just as the song was ending. We did the
bro shake as he indicated that I was all right, after all, “You like Bloodhound
Gang,” he said, not asking me if I was into the band but making a comparison, that
I was like those dudes.

Sometimes, I’m surprised by my passengers as well, the business
executive who asks if it’s The Shins on my pod (it was Deer Tick) or the CEO
chick who corrected me, that the Beastie Boys recorded “Ill Communication” after
“Paul’s Boutique” (I was confused with “License to Ill”), the sweet granny who
was tickled by The Cramps, “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”

Yes, I need my music to through a night of driving, if only
to bring me moments like that, the ones that redeem an attempt by DuPont
products to commandeer my car with arm dicks.